Kinnear often comes thrillingly close to capturing the full elusive complexity
of Hamlet. Rating: * * * *

When Hamlets come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. In the past couple of years we have seen David Tennant, Jude Law and, only the other week, John Simm play the role. Now it is the turn of Rory Kinnear, son of the late, great comic actor Roy Kinnear.

The young Kinnear is nothing like as famous as his recent predecessors, but I would put him right up there with Tennant when it comes to capturing the humanity, humour, pain and multi-layered complexity of the role.

In the past he has often given thrillingly splashy, high-definition performances, as the deliciously camp Sir Fopling Flutter in The Man of Mode, for instance, and as the serial killer Vindice in The Revenger’s Tragedy. What’s remarkable about his Hamlet, however, is Kinnear’s natural everyman quality. He gives the impression of being an ordinary bloke, albeit a highly intelligent and sensitive one, placed in an impossible situation that threatens to overwhelm him. Frequently his voice is choked with grief, as if Kinnear is drawing on his own experience of losing a father, but there are also sharp shafts of wit and, in the final act, a deeply moving sense of hard-won spiritual serenity.

Despite a receding hairline, Kinnear is very much the student prince in his hoodie and rumpled trousers. His bedroom is a disgusting mess, he doesn’t take off his trainers when he gets under the duvet and he even smokes a cigarette while delivering “To be or not to be”. But you can follow every shade of thought and flicker of emotion in the soliloquies, which are delivered with a beautiful mixture of intellect and feeling.

Beneath the anger, the bipolar mood swings, and the disguise of madness that Hamlet adopts, Kinnear also discovers a strong sense of morality in the character, and an endearing warmth and humour. No actor can capture the full elusive complexity of Hamlet, but Kinnear often comes thrillingly close.

Some may find Nicholas Hytner’s modern-dress production so hip it hurts. Ruth Negga’s sexy, fragile Ophelia is first discovered listening to The xx on a ghetto-blaster and Elsinore is presented as a modern-day dictatorship, with war planes roaring overhead, and the court crawling with sinister, silent security men sporting smart suits and earpieces. Everyone here is under constant surveillance.

The political dimension, with Fortinbras a constant background threat, is caught particularly powerfully, and when Laertes storms back after the death of his father, he brings a posse of young gunmen with him who attempt a coup d’etat.

Clare Higgins plays Gertrude as a sensual, raddled alcoholic, drinking to forget her own guilt, and her distress in the Oedipal closet-scene with Hamlet is deeply upsetting. Patrick Malahide’s Claudius is a coldly calculating power politician without a hint of compassion or generosity about him, while David Calder memorably captures the busybody malignity as well as the humour of Polonius. Vicki Mortimer’s palace designs are disappointingly bland, and don’t allow the production to distinguish sufficiently between interior scenes and those set on the ramparts and in the graveyard. But this remains a constantly compelling, fresh-minted production, with many insights and original twists, while Kinnear proves a Hamlet of great individuality and distinction.